Zero Chance for Victory
by AnonymousInsomnia
Summary: Louise Vallière disappeared from Halkeginia on the day of the Springtime Familiar Summoning Ceremony, and landed in a strange world called "Earth." There, the chronically-exploding mage found herself caught in a titanic struggle between humanity's totalitarian overlords and a small but strong resistance group known only as the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit.
1. Chapter 1

**7/29/2018 -**

 **Hey guys, it's me.**

 **It's been a while, huh? Been busy. College and life does that to you when you're unprepared like me.**

 **Anywho, I've been cooking up a plot bunny in my head ever since I finished XCOM 2: War of the Chosen, and I banged out like 3 chapters of this already. It'll get updated as it gets edited, and I hope you like it, since I thought I'd give a Familiar of Zero fanfic a shot.**

* * *

 **Tristain Academy of Magic / Kingdom of Tristain / Halkeginia / 1326 hours -**

Throughout the continent of Halkeginia, the Tristain Academy of Magic was renowned for its prestigious and wildly successful upbringing of young nobles from across the land. Children of everyone from Chevaliers to Dukes and even some of royal blood and heirs to their lands' thrones would embark on the journey merely to have the opportunity to attend. Their goal: the enrichment of their understanding of magic.

Whether it be casting, alchemy, brewing, or combat, the Tristain Academy of Magic took no small pride in its ability to turn even the most useless, weakest of mages into proper spellcasters. However, as the courtyard of the former military castle that housed the school grounds erupted with a burst of discordant sound, a flash of light, and a plume of smoke, there was no person in attendance who couldn't identify the exact cause.

Why, although the academy had had quite the reputation among the years for churning out great mages, one singular mage had been quite the thorn in the side of the institution for a little over a year's time.

Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière, youngest daughter to the Valliere name, one of the most famous and powerful families of Tristain, although studying at the prestigious magic academy, was not anything of a recognizable talent. Each and every spell she attempted to cast, regardless of function or method of casting, resulted in a rather spectacular explosion, the smoke plumes of which could sometimes be seen for miles around in every direction. Suffice it to say her lack of talent was something of a peculiar conundrum for many a tutor to attempt to solve, until a majority of the faculty simply stopped attempting to help, convinced of her ineptitude and lack of a magical future.

The young Vallière scion still possessed quite a studious mind, easily surpassing the other pupils in her year in terms of thaumaturgical* calculations, theoretical magics, and a slew of other, non-spellcasting subjects, but her brilliance was trivially overshadowed by her ineptitude for practical magic. In fact, her inability to cast traditional magic earned her a rather rude nickname: Louise the Zero.

However, the young Vallière was counting on the fact that her latest spellcasting attempt had little to do with actual spellcasting. In the Springtime, the second-year students of the Academy of Magic were to summon their familiars, creatures that would aid them in their magical activities from the day they were contracted until either party's death. The spell to call forth the familiars in question was a ritual, one that relied on a formula, a nondescript investment of magical power, and a generous helping of knowledge and luck. Nothing in the methods and tomes she studied for this day suggested that a mage's actual talents be required to summon a familiar, so she hoped that this one spell would be enough to have her be recognized as a worthy mage and that her ridicule would end.

But it seemed that fate had other plans.

"Ha! It looks like the Zero blew herself to the sky!"

That jovial jab at the diminuitive mage's expense was by none other than her schooltime rival. Kirche Augusta Frederica von Anhalt Zerbst was a redheaded mage who, due in no small part to her abnormally shapely body, exotic tanned skin, and sexually carefree demeanor - Germanians like her being infamous for such an attitude - attracted the male student body's attention in a way that the young Vallière, being diminuitive in both body shape and size, had never been able to, much to the latter's chagrin, even if she would never admit it out loud.

Kirche started to giggle at the sheer comedy of the situation, and most of her class opted to join in, save for a blue-haired slip of a girl near the back of the gathered group, who elected to roll her eyes and continue reading a book she held in hand. The teacher, one Jean Colbert, a middle-aged man with a balding head of hair and a pair of wire-frame spectacles perched on his nose, merely sighed at his students' antics, and opted to silence them with a stern tap of his magical wooden staff on the cobblestones of the courtyard.

"If everyone is quite finished, we should have a look to see if young Miss Vallière has sustained any injuries," he announced loudly. His words were able to shut them up, as even though the class may be unnecessarily cruel in their treatment of their classmate, due to the explosive nature of Louise's spells, no one especially wanted to see someone hurt, especially not due to magic. "Miss Tabitha, if you would."

The blue-haired girl's only indication of hearing her teacher's words was to wave her staff ever so slightly, conjuring a mild gust of wind and gently shearing away the smoke that had blanketed the courtyard. However, to their surprise, it was not Louise's familiar that they saw, neither hair nor hide of the young mage herself. Instead, what stood in the center of the ruined summoning circle was a tall figure, wearing otherwordly armor and possessing long, pure white hair and shimmering purple eyes, clutching an odd-looking musket, with a strange, claw-shaped object attached to its back.

* * *

 **? / ? / ? / ? Hours -**

Louise groaned, awakening rather painfully to the feeling of something heavy lying atop her. Though small and physically less than fit, the young girl still sought to rise from her uncomfortable position and peer at her surroundings. Her aching muscles burned, but eventually her determination enabled her to push whatever was laying atop her off, which appeared to be some kind of rubble. She expected her eyes to burn at what would almost certainly be a balefully glaring sunlight, but found it to be, to her estimation, about dusk.

The young mage's first thought was, _How long was I out?_

The second was, _Where in the world am I?_

She appeared to be standing among the ruins of some sort of strange city. What was left of the buildings surrounding her led her to believe that this was once some kind of great metropolis, with what must have once been grand, luxurious buildings, given the sheer size of some of the structures. She also saw, in the distant skyline, a few peaks of monolithic pillars, which she guessed were some sort of strange offerings to a god. Brimiric monuments, perhaps?

No matter what way she looked at it, however, her surroundings were far and away not where she had been just moments prior. Gone was the grassy ground of the academy courtyard, and gone were the academy grounds themselves, replaced by this strange city she had come to find herself in. She shakily rose to her feet, brushing soot and dust off of her clothes, grimacing at the realization that her cleanly pressed and ironed Tristain Academy of Magic uniform was now in tatters and would need to be replaced. She walked out of the alleyway that she had found herself in and onto a street, briefly gawking at the sheer width of the construction, marveling at the fact that this ruined road was well over twice as wide as Bourdonne Street, the widest avenue in Tristainia.

The buildings were also a strange mix of architectures. The city played host to a perplexing mix of styles both vaguely familiar and completely alien to the young girl. Buildings clearly made of brick and stone and mortar shared space with indescribably smooth-looking, squarelike stone inlaid with now-broken glass windows. What were surely beautiful structures were now neglected and faintly overgrown with a short helping of vines and ivy, though otherwise the city looked dead.

However, what set her senses on alert were a collection of strange, incomprehensible glowing green pods of some sort littering the roads, billowing some sort of seaweed-like substance in the faint breeze. This, along with the stomach-churning presence of what appeared to be the corpses of people, frozen in their moments of death, _seemingly in the process of fleeing something_ , set her ill at ease. Slipping her trusty - or not-so-trusty, so to speak - wand in hand, she plodded along the sidewalk of the road, careful to give the strange pods and corpses as wide a berth as she dared.

Eventually, the young pink-haired mage came across a group of figures standing around, twitching and moaning listlessly. She recoiled when she realized that they, although human in initial appearance, were buck naked and emaciated, with bony limbs and cracked and mottled green skin. She had, once upon a time, heard stories that her friends had told her, of a land to the east filled with the walking dead, beyond the desert into where the elven territories lay, where elves unceremoniously dumped human prisoners once they were finished using them for their nefarious gains. The stories were folksy in nature and wildly false, but the young girl could only recall the vivid images her mind conjured upon hearing them at that moment, and almost unconsciously backpedaled, every nerve in her body screaming to flee the scene at once.

However, in her attempt to flee, she stepped on a piece of broken glass. Her shoe mercilessly crushed it, producing a damnable sound that immediately turned the "zombies' " heads in her direction. She shrieked in fright at the sight of their faces, which only had a terrifying hole where their noses should have been, exposed, rotting teeth, and eerie, glowing green eyes. Instincts borne of years of stern, militaristic upbringing kicked in, and she raised her wand at the small group of zombies, the words to a magic chant on the tip of her tongue.

* * *

 **Ruins of Old Detroit / Eastern United States / North America / 1500 hours / May 16, 2035 -**

The Skyranger, a highly-sophisticated Vertical Take-Off and Landing aircraft, developed on top of its predecessor from XCOM's early days, could deploy from Kansas in the former United States and reach anywhere from New Beijing to New Moscow in a matter of hours, a feat entirely unheard of by the militaries of yesteryear, especially one from a craft that was effectively a troop transport vehicle. It was a marvel of engineering, and with Elerium-powered articulated turbine engines, it had aged well and maintained relevancy a great deal into the decades since the founding of the alien-controlled ADVENT administration.

However, the XCOM operatives that utilized the thing still complained to no end about its less-than-comfortable seating.

Sergeant Matthew "Striker" Wilkinson rubbed his sore behind as the Skyranger's pilot, Firebrand, navigated through yet _another_ bout of turbulence. He sat on his white-and-gray digital camouflage kevlar vest, in lieu of proper seat padding, to help alleviate some of the pains of dropship travel, but it really didn't help much. He held an old shotgun in his arms, entirely appropriate for him due to his status as Menace Two's Ranger.

In the back restlessly paced the team's Sharpshooter, Corporal John Mayberry, who checked, double checked, and triple checked his issued sidearm. He was unfazed by the rocking of the Skyranger, having grown up on a British fishing boat as a kid, nearly three decades ago.

The squad leader, Lieutenant Alice "Brandy" Richards, Menace Two's Specialist, was staring at nothing as she sat in her seat, her carbine hanging from its sling around her neck. The grizzled blonde from Australia was one for few words, and tended to let her skills do the talking. It was little wonder that she was one of the first Lieutenant candidates in the revived XCOM Project.

Across from him sat the team's Grenadier, one Private First Class Arnold Phillips, a black kid from New Brooklyn and a very recently promoted operative, who was still a little green behind the ears, and showed it, fidgeting nervously in his seat, cradling his machine gun as if his life depended on it.

Menace Two was one of the most senior of the half-dozen squads that XCOM fielded in this war, second only to Menace One, which had been present for the whole of XCOM's revitalization on February 28, where the squad ran a diversion for Central Officer Bradford, the de facto leader of XCOM in abscence of its legendary Commander, for Crasher One and Sergeant Jane Kelly so that they could reclaim said Commander. The fight had been as trying as it had always been, but with the Commander, casualties had never been so low in years and progress had never been as fast.

The green lights in the skyranger blinked once, and a projector lit up the darkened bay, displaying the general mission objectives, a picture of the AO, and the location. In the corner flashed an image of the Central Officer himself as he gave a last-minute debrief of the mission.

"Our sensors on the Avenger detected some indeterminate anomalous readings coming from the ruins of what used to be the city of Detroit. We don't know what exactly we're going to find there, but it seems that luckily, ADVENT hasn't seemed to see this energy reading as something that they want to look into. However, _we_ do. Firebrand will be fast-roping you as close to the signature as she can, and you will have to secure the AO and find our mystery readings, then bug out. The Lost seem to be present in force, and there's no telling when they will overrun our objective. Operation Summoned Charm is now live. Good luck, and be careful, Menace Two. Central, out."

The lights suddenly switched to red, and a warning tone sounded throughout the Skyranger's cargo bay.

"We're in position to drop!" Firebrand's voice crackled over the craft's internal comms.

The members of Menace Two briefly checked their weapons to ensure that they were loaded, had cartridges chambered, and safeties were off before fitting on leftover gear. The Skyranger's cargo door rapidly opened, giving the inhabitants of the VTOL each a lungful of the musty air permeating the decaying city. A set of black ropes descended from the top of the cargo bay and to the ground, and Menace Two leapt from the airborne vehicle, using the ropes to reach the ground. The moment their feet hit the floor, Firebrand took off, leaving the squad to quickly scan the area with the muzzles and sights of their weapons.

Striker, callsign Menace Two-Two, took point, quickly running to and taking cover behind a building wall, covering the new sightlines opened up to him with his shotgun. The others followed, with Brandy [Menace Two-Actual] and Phillips [Menace Two-Four], to his left behind a derelict car, and Mayberry [Menace Two-Three], hunkering down behind a dumpster.

"Never get used to this goddamn smell..." Striker groaned under his breath.

"You got that right, brother," replied Four.

Suddenly, a plume of smoke appeared in the distance, followed by a muffled _BANG_.

"The hell wazzat? Bloody ADVENT?" Three hissed.

"Remember the debrief, Three?" Striker replied, "No ADVENT's supposed to be out here. Resistance cell?"

"No," Brandy spoke up, "Resistance won't be here. Only Reapers. Maybe Skirmishers." Another explosion in the distance. "Not them. Reapers stealth. Skirmishers stab. Lost like sound."

Brandy was right. The zombie-like horrors known as "The Lost" were easily kown to be drawn to the sounds of battle, and explosions were like dinner bells to them. Nothing drew their attention more effectively than a good frag grenade, save for the ultrasonic lures that Shen and Tygan developed in the last week. In fact, Four carried a cylinder full of the things in his grenade launcher, primed and ready for use.

The squad's earpiece communicators crackled to life, and Bradford's voice filtered through. "Well whoever it is, we need to get there, yesterday. If it's ADVENT, we engage the target and eliminate it. If it's a civilian or resistance, getting there now will minimize any potential casualties. Move it!"

Brandy quickly directed Menace Two to move up, the quartet of soldiers sticking to cover whenever possible, as a safety precaution. Still, they sprinted as fast as they could to the source of the explosions, which didn't seem to end.

"Damn, whoever's makin' it rain down there's makin' me jealous," remarked Four.

Suddenly, a figure dashed into view and ducked out of an alleyway. On instinct, Striker tracked the target with the bead of his shotgun, letting up when he realized that the target was a civilian.

And a rather strange civilian at that. She was a girl, young, possibly early into her teenage years, given her stature, with waist-length pink hair, covered in soot. A rather strange style, given the extensive amount of hair dye something like that would take. Granted, ADVENT gene therapy clinics were more than happy to "alter" people in their care and tailor their bodies to their liking, but pink hair was never one of the more popular gene mods. She was dressed in what appeared to be a tattered school uniform with a black cape, something that might not have been an uncommon sight in the more "out-there" private schools from two decades ago.

Weirdly still, she clutched what appeared to be a wooden stick in her hand. Lost dashers poured out of the alleyway in pursuit of her, and she did something that made Striker briefly question his sanity.

The pink-haired girl screamed something in an incomprehensible (to his ears, anyway) language. Then, a nearly-invisible beam of light emerged from the tip of the stick and struck the ground between the dashers, and an explosion blossomed in that very spot, instantly obliterating the dashers in hot pursuit.

However, there were still plenty of Lost trailing behind, and Striker plugged the first in its head with buckshot from his Auto-5 shotgun, prompting the rest of Menace Two to follow suit. Brandy's M4 carbine barked in short bursts, methodically taking down a Lost easily with each burst. Three's M2010 sniper rifle barked five times before it was empty, and the Brit cursed as he drew a Glock 17 and began gunning down as many Lost as he could see. Finally, Four's M249 SAW roared to life, scything across the Lost mass's upper bodies, effectively mopping up the rest of the ones in immediate pursuit. Just in time, too, as Menace Two's ammunition had finally run dry by then. When Four's SAW's belt finally depleted, the squad quickly took advantage of the lull in action to reload.

After Striker topped off his shotgun's magazine, he turned his attention to the civilian, who had backed herself to the wall of a nearby building and was staring at them with fear in her eyes and that explosion-inducing stick grasped firmly in hand.

" **Qui es-tu?! Où suis-je?!** " she shouted at them in a language that was clearly not English. Strange, given the region.

"Uh, anyone speak... whatever the fuck that is?" Four asked.

"It's French, Four," Brandy replied.

"So you do speak it?"

"No."

"What about you, Three?" Four asked again.

"Hell no, newbie."

While his squadmates argued over their ability to speak foreign languages, Striker was paying attention to the girl. Of course, he paid attention to her while behind a chunk of wall made of solid concrete.

The girl's eyebrows seemed to raise, in confusion or realization, he couldn't really tell from this distance. She seemed to take a breath to calm herself before speaking again, this time in a very different language than before.

"Do you understand me now?" her voice was timid, though not quite shaky like when she was attempting communication in French.

"Dammit, if you could speak English before, why the hell didn't you start with that?!" And leave it to Four to ignore subtlety and conversational conventions.

"Shut up, you dog!" ...And the diplomatic situation got worse. Damn newbies. "Who are you people anyway?"

"You don't know?" Striker asked, genuine confusion in his tone. Ever since their return, ADVENT had been slandering XCOM's name in their propaganda, whether that be radio broadcasts, news reporting, or wanted posters. In fact, the Commander and his bridge crew had been running a counter-propaganda campaign of their own as a little side project, distributing recruitment posters and the like in post-mission.

The girl shook her head. "You look like a bunch of mercenaries. While I'm grateful even to commoners for help in this kind of situation, I must return to the Tristain Academy of Magic posthaste!" Mercenaries? Commoners? Did she say _magic_?

Suddenly, howls pierced the silence. The girl's and Four's faces both drained of color as they realized what those howls meant: more Lost.

"Bradford, we've found the objective," Brandy spoke into her earpiece, "It's a girl. Also stirred up a hornet's nest. Requesting immediate evac."

This time, the voice that replied wasn't Bradford's, but Tygan's. "Hornet's nest is something of an understatement, Menace Two-Actual. It appears that the whole of the Lost biomass is attempting to converge on your position!"

"Indeed, doctor," Bradford cut in, "Menace Two, Firebrand is thirty seconds out. You need to hold off the Lost until you can evacuate."

"Who are you talking to? There's no one else here," said the girl.

"Affirmative, Central," acknowledged Brandy. "Four, deploy lures in the alleyways. Force them into chokepoints."

"Aye, ma'am!"

"All else, form a perimeter. Girl, here, _now_."

"What? Well I never-!" A sharp glare from Brandy shut her up. "Y-Yes, of course." Meekly, she complied with the Lieutenant's orders, huddling down behind a rusty trash can and attempting to make herself small.

Four's M32A1 grenade launcher barked six times and the lures were launched into the alleyway, just in time for a new wave of Lost to come swarming into the chokepoint, only for them to get mowed down by a fresh wave of bullets and pellets, courtesy of Menace Two.

Suddenly, a discordant screeching could be heard over the din of battle as Firebrand maneuvered the Skyranger into position. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the girl staring, open-mouthed, at the aircraft, its bulbous, yet angular fuselage and twin turbine engines obviously not something she had ever seen before.

"W-What in Brimir's name is _that_?!" She cried, apparently in disbelief.

The Skyranger's cargo bay opened, and a set of winch ropes fell from it. A small grid was illuminated with a series of spotlights hidden in the tail of the aircraft, an indication of the evacuation zone.

"Go! Go there, now! Grab a rope and get in the Skyranger!" Striker commanded, "Haul ass!"

The civilian girl did as she was told, making a mad dash to the Skyranger and grabbing onto the rope. She let out a squeak of surprise as she was hoisted into the cargo bay, and disappeared into the aircraft.

"Menace Two! We're leaving!" No one would object to such a command from Brandy, not in this situation. The squad tactically retreated, moving backwards to the Skyranger, still shooting into the mob of Lost as they went. Three went up first, followed by Four, and then Brandy. Last to go was Striker, who emptied the buckshot in his shotgun into the fast-approaching horde before grabbing hold of a rope.

However, as he felt himself being raised into the bay, he felt an abnormally-strong grip on his leg. Yelping in surprise, discomfort, and pain, he quickly drew a pistol from his vest's chest holster. It went against XCOM protocol for an operative to equip themselves with more than one secondary weapon, but Striker was always one for pragmatism in combat above all. The Colt M1911A1's grip was more than familiar in his hands as he quickly took aim at the snarling face of a Lost dasher that managed to snag him before he could leave. He lined up the crude, obsoletely-tiny iron sights to lie between the monstrosity's green glowing eyes and rapidly pulled the heavy military trigger of his trusty sidearm. The handgun's ten-round extended magazine was quickly emptied as eleven .45-caliber hollowpoint slugs smashed into the Lost, brutally killing it and freeing Striker to clamber into the cargo bay and catch his breath.

Firebrand quickly shut the cargo bay doors and piloted the Skyranger to swiftly vacate Old Detroit, to return to the Avenger, as was mission proper. The mission's After Action Report was projected into the back of the cargo bay, but Wilkinson hardly paid it any mind as Menace Two attempted to decompress just a little from their harrowing escape.

The pink-haired civilian girl's eyes darted around wildly before settling on Wilkinson, who dimly noticed that her eyes were pink as well.

"Who in the world are you people?" she asked in a voice that conveyed equal parts, amazement, awe, and astonishment, with a dash of fear mixed into the blend as well.

"We're XCOM," Wilkinson replied, with as much grandeur and finality that could be packed into a mere two words. Admittedly, he felt no small amount of pride saying that.

However, that pride was dashed - more like demolished, really - when the civilian's only response was to cock her head to the side and ask, "Who?"

* * *

*Thaumaturgy - basically the more mathematical and scientific part of magic, as far as I can glean from Wikipedia. Call it magic math or something, I guess. Also called wonderworking.

* * *

 **AN: So yeah. I've been away, and kinda been trying to keep my mind off of college come August, so there's really been no writing going on for the most part, save for this. I know a lot of my readers (whichever ones are still here anyway) are looking for updates on my other stuff, and for that, I'm sorry. Writer's block hits hard when you're busy and school killed any writing motivation I've had for the tail end of Senior year and summer's been pretty stressful.**

 **Plus I gotta hang with the bois before we all leave and spread ourselves over the United States, like some sort of epidemic of perpetually poor, barely-functioning adults.**

 **Hooray.**

 **As for this story, it's definitely not going to be vanilla XCOM 2. I am going to try to introduce a few small new ideas I've had and expand the world a bit, starting with weapons, as you may have noticed. And as I've said, I have two more chapters written that need to be edited and another as a work in progress. We'll see where we go from there, kay?**

 **As always, remember to Read, Review, Favorite, and Follow.**

 **-AnonymousInsomnia.**


	2. Chapter 2

**3/4/19**

 **Hey, um... So this is awkward. It has been a while again, as you can see. So a few things have changed. I think my beta reader's got some issues with things on his end so I'm just gonna post chapters and wing it. Anywho, college and life still goes on. I'm in my second semester, freshman year, so who knows how much time I'll actually get to write in the future. For now, I reworked the second chapter of this story before actually posting it, so I hope you guys like it (the couple dozen people who actually read my stuff, love ya). I actually have a couple more chapters ready, but I'm going to rewrite parts of them before I'm actually comfortable posting them.**

* * *

 **XCOM Fast-Deployment Aircraft - Designation: SKYRANGER/ Eastern United States / North America / 1700 hours / May 16, 2035 -**

The ride back to the _Avenger_ was... interesting, to say the least. Richards, once Menace Two was in the clear, diagnosed Wilkinson with a sprained ankle, at least, and, after administering some painkillers from a medikit, instructed the Ranger to keep his weight off of it and to get some rest while he still could, before someone on Tygan's team could get a look at him. Wilkinson took the injury in stride, and endured the short flight back to base with little more than a mild grimace occasionally flickering across his face. The man was relatively relaxed, which was more than he could say for Mayberry.

The sniper had taken it upon himself as the squad's guard for the trip, and had kept his Glock pistol trained upon their new "guest", who merely huffed in disdain at the British XCOM agent. Richards attempted to establish communications with the civilian girl, but she said something about speaking only to superiors and not armed thugs. Richards, cool as ice, elected to give the girl exactly what she wanted, and Wilkinson, nursing his tender wound, chose to do the same. However, Mayberry and Phillips both reeled back as if struck, and chose to briefly throw hissy-fits under their breaths before spending the rest of the time glaring at the pinkette.

Pinkette? Was that really the right term for it? Wilkinson briefly considered "strawberry-blonde", but quickly discarded it as too wordy of a term for a soldier like him to use.

Thankfully, the ride was short, and no one started anything. Even the girl, who sounded like a kook to Wilkinson, hadn't even twitched in the direction of her weird explosion-making stick, which was tucked neatly into her boot. The Skyranger decelerated onto the _Avenger_ 's helipad and touched down, causing the craft to jolt a little in its reinforced-alloy frame.

"Alright kids, we're home," came Firebrand's voice over the VTOL's internal speakers, "Make sure you don't leave anything in the car. Save me a drink in the bar!"

"Yeah, mom," Phillips tersely snarked back.

The five of them filed out of the Skyranger's cargo bay doors and onto the metal surface of the landing pad, where they were greeted by four figures. Two of them were labcoat-clad men, carrying a stretcher between them - medical personnel, obviously here for Wilkinson's mild combat injury. It wasn't too bad, but anything inflicted by the largely-unknown threat of the Lost was treated with the utmost care.

One of the other men was clad in a military BDU, with a form-fitting top whose sleeves ended in fingerless gloves and featured a sheathed combat knife on the shoulder, and green utilitarian pants, neatly bloused black military boots. His hair ended in a peak in the front, and the man sported a five o' clock shadow of greying hair. Central Officer John Bradford was an easily-recognizable person for anyone in the fight against ADVENT, whether they be civilian, alien, or human, as the man had, in the past 20 years, become the face of XCOM's resistance against the alien overlords.

However, the other man, as unassuming as he was, was a source of much greater surprise to the soldiers of Menace Two. Dressed in a nondescript grey XCOM noncombatant uniform stood a man who appeared to be in his thirties, with close-cropped black hair, piercing blue eyes, and a strong jawline. This was the man who nearly singlehandedly brought the XCOM resistance movement back from the brink of extinction and retook the fight to the Ethereal Elders and their machinations since a couple of months prior. This was the man who the aliens fought tooth, nail, and claw to reclaim for their own, and who stopped at nothing to pay alien blood for human blood spilled in their quest to retake their world.

This was the Commander of XCOM.

 **Unknown Base / ? / ? / 1702 hours / May 16, 2035 -**

When Louise stepped out of the strange flying _thing_ , she certainly didn't expect to be where she was right now. She expected to step out into a secluded place, probably a forested area or a cave, unseen from normal human eyes, as it was obvious that this... XCOM was not a true military unit, and that only meant mercenaries or a paramilitary group of some kind, as evident by the sheer lack of discipline on full display from the more crass members of their little merry band.

Instead of a place away from prying eyes, she stepped out onto the top of an enormous structure made of metal, which was strange to her. Iron wasn't cheap by any stretch of the imagination, and while something seemed a little _off_ about the iron that everything was made out of, it must've cost entire shiploads of gold just to buy enough metal to construct that strange flying contraption and this weird structure. It honestly made the girl's head spin, just thinking about the sheer scale of it all.

While two men, each with an unusual bleached-white coat draped over their bodies, carried the injured man of the small squad away, Louise was approached by another pair of men, who seemed to begin to take a keen interest in her. She brought her guard up, though not physically, and prepared for anything that the two strangers might have planned for her.

The man in the grey outfit spoke up first, though his words weren't directed towards her. "Menace Two, you're dismissed. Get yourselves some rations and recuperate." The people that had gotten her out of that accursed city all smartly saluted, though it was an unfamiliar one that involved placing a hand on the forehead, and marched off into the structure through a nearby door.

Once the three of them were alone, Louise spoke up.

"So... Who are you? Where exactly is this place?" Easy to start off with simple questions. Don't want to overwhelm anyone for a first impression, which was obvious.

"I am Central Officer John Bradford of XCOM, and this is the _Avenger_ , our mobile base," replied the grey and green-clothed man, who spoke gruffly.

"You can call me the Commander," said the other. "We understand that evacuating civilians from active combat zones is a tricky business, so we'll be escorting you down to our research and development facility for some preliminary screenings and such."

"We'll make sure ADVENT hasn't got their claws on you," Central Officer Bradford added. "We also want to take a look at those talents of yours you displayed today, but no funny business. We'll be accompanied by guards. The extra-twitchy type, with frayed nerves and itchy trigger fingers." Talents? Did he mean her failed magic? No, that couldn't possibly be. Must be her family's reputation spreading, or something.

"Now, now, Central," the Commander said, nudging the stern man with an elbow, "best not to scare the civilians."

"Sure, sure," Bradford replied. "What's your name, kid?"

"I'm not a kid!" Louise blurted out, almost instinctively, before she could fully stop herself. Reigning her embarrassingly-short temper in, she answered, "My name is Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière."

"What a mouthful," the Commander remarked. Louise's eyebrow twitched uncomfortably.

"C'mon, Louise. Let's get a move on," ordered Bradford. Together, the three of them moved through the same doorway that Menace Two disappeared through. They themselves were soon flanked by two armed guards, who filed into step with the three of them, holding strangely-shaped black muskets of some sort. Louise's face slipped into a mask of unbending, unflinching steel, but inwardly she was equal parts afraid and annoyed. She was annoyed that these people would have the gall to take her - it was yet to be seen as a rescue or as a prisoner - to their base of operations and threaten her with guns, a commoners' weapon. She was afraid because things had gone well past the point of making no sense, and, more than a little, Louise wanted out.

The escort was, thankfully, brief, but along the way, Louise passed a few very _interesting_ sights. She glimpsed through a window and saw a chamber, filled with people doing some strange activity, with a huge blue glowing sphere as the centerpiece of the room. Eventually, after a series of confusingly-winding corridors and levels, the group made it to one particular door. This one was labeled in an incomprehensible script, but judging by the fact that they had all stopped in front of it, Louise deduced that this was the "Research and Development Facility" that the Commander had mentioned, and that the script simply read out that name. Bradford stepped up to a curious thing set into the wall next to the strange door and poked it a few times. In response, the door quickly slid open with a hissing noise, revealing a truly odd place.

The Tristainian native couldn't even guess as to the function of everything in this strange place, but she did see an area that looked like a laboratory of sorts, where a few figures in white coats mingled around, completing various tasks. Further inside the room, there was a great, big _thing_ built into the wall and protruding from it, where something inside of it was inexplicably spinning and glowing an inhuman green color.

One of the people in the white coats, a bald man with skin in a shade reminiscent of the Germanians - barbarians they where, in Louise's opinion - approached them. He nodded to the escort, and the soldiers positioned themselves by the door, ready to act if necessary, but otherwise put on standby. The man adjusted a pair of thin spectacles perched on his nose before addressing Bradford, the Commander, and she.

"Central. Commander," he said, his even voice measured, professional. "I've already taken the liberty of preparing all the necessary equipment, and Doctor Rainier is ready to take the subject's physical."

"Thank you much, Doctor," replied the Commander. He turned to address Louise. "Why don't you introduce yourself to our head of research, Louise?"

"Oh! Yes, well, my name is Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière, Third daughter to the House of Vallière, and a second-year student at the Tristain Academy of Magic."

The bald man's eyebrow quirked in interest. "Remarkably... unique terms to describe yourself... Very well, Miss Vallière, I am Doctor Richard Tygan, Chief Science Officer of XCOM, here aboard the _Avenger_. If you will step over this way, we may begin a short physical examination, to ensure that you escaped unscathed from the overrun Detroit population center. Central and Commander, you are welcome to supervise the process."

Tygan led the three of them to a separate section of the research facility and situated Louise upon a metal table of sorts. The man then ushered over a woman, again in one of those white coats, to them.

"Miss Vallière, this is Doctor Myra Rainier," Tygan said, "She will be performing your physical examination before Central and the Commander head to more... fascinating matters."

Rainier tucked her red bangs away using a small metal clip before slipping on a curious device that appeared to be a length of tube that snaked its way into her ears and a small handheld machine that emitted a strange light.

"Stay still now, Louise," Rainier said, her voice gentle and soothing, "It'll be over sooner if you're still, and I promise it won't hurt a bit."

Louise bit her lip, but nonetheless nodded and did nothing as Rainier's handheld device emitted a strange light on her body. The device, presumably medical in nature, was then swept over her in every which way before it emitted a soft chime, at which Rainier stared at another part of the device that emitted a bluish light, which played across the freckles dotting her cheeks. The doctor hummed, deep in thought, before unhooking the other device from her ears, presumably finding no need in such a contraption anymore now that she was finished with her strange handheld machine.

"Well Louise," Rainier finally said, "It seems that I can give you a perfect bill of health. Congratulations. Not many people can escape the clutches of the Lost so unharmed." Louise frowned at that, not daring to think about those... _things_ , lest gruesome images come back unbidden to the forefront of her mind. "Central, I've also detected some anomalous readings, but I'm sure that that will be more pertinent to Dr. Tygan and yourself than me."

Dr. Rainier then turned to face the Commander and Bradford. "She's all yours, now. If you'll excuse me, I have a patient's injured ankle to attend to." And with that, the doctor left Louise alone with the two men in charge of XCOM. The Central Officer ordered all the nearby people out of earshot, and once they were all alone, it became the time for questions and answers.

Bradford, pulling out a strange rectangular device from a nearby table, was the first to speak. "Now, for our records, once more, your name, please. Spell it out, if you can." Irritably, Louise complied. He inputted Louise's age, a general approximation of her birthday, and a very tentative country of birth, though that last one was something to talk about.

"Tristain? You're sure?" asked Bradford. Louise nodded.

"Commander, you remember any countries like that from before the war? Because I sure as hell ain't heard of 'Tristain.' " Louise felt her mouth fall open in shock.

"But how?!" she barked. "Tristain is one of the four most important human nations in Halkeginia! Nay, it is the greatest nation of them all! You commoners severely lack common sense if you can't find it on a map."

"Well, frankly, I feel insulted," the Commander said.

"Here," Bradford said, tapping on his rectangle thingy. Somehow, a large, floating blue ball appeared above it, spindles of light blinking in and out, tying the device to the ball as if by strings. "If we're so dumb, point out the general location of this 'Tristain' somewhere on here. We'll go from there."

"What in the world is this?" Louise asked. She asked for a map, not a damn ball!

"Never seen a globe before?"

"That's what it's called? Why this thing instead of a map?"

"It _is_ a map," the Commander said. "I could pull up a flat map, if you want, but this being a more accurate representation of earth, Bradford figured you would be less confused by the size factor."

Louise squinted at the "globe". "There! That landmass there looks familiar! What countries lie there?"

"There?" the Commander said, "That's Europe, and the countries Germany, France, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, Russia, and England are there, among others."

Louise could feel her face fall at those names, all unfamiliar, save for Germany and Germania. She could feel her mind go into reverse, her recollection of events running back, past the dead city, all the way to the summoning ritual. The summoning ritual was a ceremony designed to bring a familiar servant to a mage's side. There's no way that it could bring the _summoner_ somewhere else, right?

Right?

 _ **Avenger**_ **Mobile Air Base / Classified / North America / 1748 hours / May 16, 2035 -**

The poor girl looked as if her feet had been swept out from under her, which was admittedly very strange, given that nothing she said had matched up with known facts. That was a red flag for a potential spy, but Bradford could say with reasonable certainty that this girl, Louise, was far from a spy, let alone an ADVENT one. That wasn't just his intuition talking, either. He'd had Shen monitoring all of Louise's movements using the surveillance system aboard the _Avenger_ , utilizing the finest in recognition software technology to see if, at any time, Louise lied about any tiny little thing. It even worked on the Faceless, which was a trial and a half to figure out when a local resistance group somehow managed to catch one of the goopy, horrendous-looking aliens captive. So far, his datapad hadn't pinged once, so despite the inconsistencies, Louise wasn't lying to them.

Anyway, why would a spy work _towards_ making themselves the most noticeable thing in the room? Surely no surveillance could be gained when under scrutiny for having bright, technicolor hair and asking nonsensical questions all day.

Louise looked like she was going to be sick, and the Commander, always the quick thinker, rushed to retrieve a bucket for the young girl to relieve herself with.

Once that bit of unpleasantness was done with, the questioning resumed.

"Those abilities that you demonstrated out in the field today," began the Commander, "the whole 'summoning explosions' thing. What exactly is that?"

The girl scoffed, though it didn't seem to be directed at the Commander. "It's my magic. The spell I used... It's supposed to cast fireballs, but all I bring forth are those stupid magic misfires..."

"...Magic," Bradford muttered incredulously. Seriously?

"Magic," the Commander agreed.

"Magic, Commander?" Bradford asked.

"Magic, apparently, Central," The Commander replied.

"Yes, magic!" came Louise's annoyed response. "I _did_ mention that I am a second-year student at the Academy of Magic in Tristain, did I not?"

"Yes, well," said Bradford, "magic's been thoroughly proven to be parlor tricks and hoaxes here on earth, so either you're lying and you're hiding some kind of grenade launcher under those sleeves, or..."

"Or _what_ , Central Officer?" asked Louise, a biting tone present in her voice.

"Or we don't know," the Commander said. "We've been fighting ADVENT and the Elders so long, and they've pulled all sorts of shit from their asses that nothing really surprises me anymore. Let's just say that Louise is from another dimension and leave it at that for now."

A small pause, a lull in the conversation, permeated the room for a solid minute. Then it was Louise's turn to question her new _acquaintences_.

"So you people call yourselves XCOM, then," Louise began. "What exactly _is_ XCOM?"

Central gave the Commander a look. The Commander winced, and Bradford could almost _see_ the brief flash of unpleasant memories that were almost certainly coursing through the man's mind at this minute, so Bradford elected to begin the "cultural exchange" of sorts.

Bradford tapped away at his datapad, quickly logging into XCOM's onboard secure database with his administrative credentials, and brought up footage from the first invasion. It was a video from a cell phone camera, of a random citizen in Germany, who had been enjoying a walk through the city with his wife and daughter, when everything changed. The video began to play, and Bradford handed it to Louise, who stared at it in rapt attention.

The video began with a short clip of the man's wife and daughter, the former of which was holding the latter's hand as they innocently trotted down the sidewalk, the city's buildings passing slowly by. The woman wore a simple gray dress and had her hair tied in a bun, but the little girl had worn a colorful mix of a yellow-and-white striped shirt under a pair of bright blue overalls and red-and-white sneakers, with a pair of braided pigtails trailing the sides of her face. It was night, and prime time for criminal elements to be lurking about, but the young family seemed oblivious to the slightly-paranoid risks, and made small talk as they walked along.

Bradford had seen the footage dozens of times already, with and without subtitles. As a multilingual man, fluent in a handful of languages including German, Russian, and Spanish, he had no trouble understanding that the conversation was about work, and the daughter was humming some nursery rhyme song to herself. Suddenly, the air was pierced by a booming, then shrieking, noise, which was punctuated by an enormous _CRASH_ as an object that Bradford was intimately familiar with in his earlier years smashed into the road of an intersection. The camera would then frantically spin around, only to land on the strange, obscene alien object, which glowed a disorienting green. Louise's brows furrowed in recognition, no doubt remembering the similar shape to those decrepit ones in the ruins of Old Detroit.

Quickly, a crowd of civilians gathered around the strange thing, muttering amongst themselves, snapping off cell phone pictures of the thing, and warily approaching the object. Then, the object shifted, its frame uncovering an array of ports that hissed out a strange green alien mist that quickly tried to engulf the surrounding crowd, which attempted to flee. The man could only flail helplessly, his phone still clutched in his grip, as an unseen force dragged him to the pod. The last portions of the video were of his family, as they desperately fleed the scene, the wife giving her husband one last tearful glance as she ran down an alleyway.

Bradford watched Louise's reaction to the startling video, expecting and finding shock, horror, primal revulsion, and confusion. Louise looked up at him, her expression pleading for answers.

"First day of March - third month of the year - year 2015. Unidentified objects of extraterrestrial, alien origin fall from the sky, demolishing much of the city of Berlin, Germany in the opening hours of what became known as the Ethereal Invasion War. Thousands of civilians were slaughtered and missing, and the German military scrambled desperately to try to combat the threat. Many good men and women would perish in this opening act, to little avail.

That's where we come in. XCOM, or the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit, was created by a secretive Council of earth's nations and activated on that day. We mobilized troops to attempt to fight back against the incursion, but by the time we arrived, much of the fighting had died down, and we became what was effectively a mop-up crew. Our enemy and their capabilities were unknown, but we still rushed headfirst into combat in Operation Devil's Moon.

The operation, the first and last one that I would ever command under the original authority of XCOM, was a colossal failure. Delta squad, our four-man reconnaissance unit, deployed to find dead and dying FSLK200 German Long Range Recon Patrol soldiers, killed in unfathomed-before ways, at least in terms of human warfare. Towards the tail end of the mission, we caught first contact with alien combatants and psionics, and of them, only Delta-Two, one soldier out of four, survived to fight the alien menace."

When Bradford spoke again, his voice was small. Surprisingly so, even to himself.

"Rodrigo Delgado was a recruit from the Agrupación de Fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales, or the Special Operations Forces Group of Argentina. Since then, he had stopped at nothing to try and help combat the alien threat. He was our first soldier to receive the Council's Medal of Honor, our first to rise to the in-house rank of Captain, and the first to receive genetic modifications through the use of MELD."

It was the Commander who, surprisingly enough, rounded out Captain Delgado's story. "Delgado was killed, along with 80% of our operational staff, including technicians, operatives, and scientists, on June 17, 2015 when the aliens discovered XCOM's base, overrunning it, forced the survivors to flee, and captured me, almost singlehandedly drawing the Ethereal Invasion War to a close. I was captured by the enemy, my mind put to work snuffing out the very existence of a resistance movement I should have been supporting.

A week later, after devastating the remaining earth militaries, the Elders set up a puppet government called ADVENT, which then set about destroying the pockets of resistance humanity had raised against it, and snuffing out the culture and identity of the surviving peoples. Now, they subjugate our people by the millions, and are now attempting to complete a mysterious "Avatar Project" which will no doubt be the end of the human race."

"So..." Louise said, "What are you going to do with me, now?"

"Well," the Commander replied, "It's standard mission ROE* that civilians caught in our war against ADVENT should be treated for any wounds at the base before being shunted to the care of the nearest available resistance camp."

"So you're going to just get rid of me?"

"We usually put it in better terms than that," said Bradford, "but yes, essentially."

"No! I have a better idea," Louise paused, obviously encouraging herself, before continuing, "So if you fight creatures that come from the stars... and they will stop at nothing to exploit people..."

Central nodded an affirmative, but neither he nor the Commander expected the girl's next words.

"I want to join you."

* Rules of Engagement - standard playbook of how soldiers, operatives, and organizations will typically conduct military operations.

* * *

 **AN: Well, not much needs to be said here that I haven't already said at the top. My college life still gets busier and busier, and I keep getting distracted playing video games instead of writing, so sorry about that, y'all. Anyway, speaking of video games, I played the shit outta REmake 2, and I got a plot idea, so I'm also posting a new Resident Evil story. Hooray.**

 **Edit: I made a mistake when I wrote this chapter at first. My editor wasn't able to check it for me before he dropped off the grid. I made a mistake in assuming that Europeans in the Middle Ages (as Halkeginia is based off of) believed in the Flat Earth Theory. I have removed that small section of the story. It came to my attention through a Guest review. I have to extend my gratitude towards this anonymous individual, though I believe that Halkeginia takes more cues from the Middle Ages than the 17th century, as the presence of the Feudalist system in ZnT canon is a Middle Ages thing.**

 **As always, remember to Read, Review, Favorite, and Follow.**

 **-AnonymousInsomnia.**


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